Voidus

Can I just say that the tags for this thread were needlessly aggressive. Things like that are not likely to promote genuine discussion and really don't give the impression that you're actually interested in people's feedback. I know that receiving bad reviews of something can be disheartening, but getting aggressive with the people who gave the reviews is just going to promote further conflict and won't resolve anything.

The corner of Laurelai's mouth quirked up as Lita began a commentary. Laurelai hadn't realized she was burning so much tin, hearing heartbeats at that distance was no easy feat even for a tineye. "Whatever you want to say to them, you can say to me and I'll pass on the message." The man from TUBA said, clearing his throat as he did. "In the interests of ensuring that our message is delivered as completely as possible I'd be more comfortable if we took it there ourselves." Laurelai said calmly. "We've made an agreement not to attack any of you so you don't need to worry about their safety." And if we were trying to attack you they wouldn't send three members from the counter intelligence division, they'd send a horde of monstrosities that would crush you with weight of numbers and horrifying abilities. She thought wryly.

Voidus gave a bemused smile towards the Stranger and his questions. He shouldn't have expected anything else from the Stranger of course, being the head of a Research and Development division for as long as he had was bound to guide one's mental outlook into a certain process. "It's... complicated." Voidus conceded wearily, hesitating before continuing on. "For the most part I suppose I didn't. They were from before. Before this world, before these responsibilities. Before all of this." He leaned back, closing his eyes and smiling briefly as he lost himself in nostalgia before the smile slipped and his expression darkened. "But that was a long time ago, and as you say a family is a fragile thing. One that I couldn't keep entirely whole." A quiet moment passed where neither of them spoke before Voidus continued in a small, wavering voice. "Such a very long time ago that I don't remember her name." A bead of moisture slowly collected at the corner of his eye before gently folling down his cheek and then falling onto his arm. He stared at it for a moment with wide eyes, wiping at his eye reflexively with his other arm to catch any more. But there were none, even the act of grieving seemed beyond him now. "I only have our child left." He finished, still staring at his hands. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurelai gave Lita a small smile as she addressed the nearby TUBA member, she'd grown accustomed to the DA a lot sooner than Laurelai had when she first joined. It was a lucky thing she'd decided to try and get a drink that night, or Lita might have ended up putting her talents to use for one of the other guilds instead. "Well, messier." Laurelai added, still smiling. She followed Lita's lead, subtly concealing her spikes from obvious view. "These creatures that already roam the streets aren't ours but they're already making a fair bit of mess. Still, as my colleague says it's about to get worse. So if you'd be so kind as to take us to where your leaders currently are?" She began walking out of the alley, not waiting for an immediate reply.

Laurelai stumbled into the alleyway at last, her hair hung, clinging to the sides of her head and water dripped both from it and from the Alethi dress that she'd been wearing. She bent over briefly in pain before coughing up a large volume of water. Cursed underwater Alleys. Why did they ever think those would be a good idea? She scanned her surroundings briefly, managing to pick out Lita quickly enough. But her partner in conversation was a little more of a surprise. The familiar bowler hat and suit, Mac had joined them in the alley. Why is Mac here? Checking up on us? Did we mess anything up? Miss something? She gave a small deferential nod towards Mac, frowning a little as the motion sent another stream of water down her face. "Sorry, hit Alley U-347 on the way." She explained, gesturing towards her soaked form. "I'll just be a moment." She closed her eyes, concentrating for a moment. Recent history like that was relatively easy to change, especially something like the path she'd taken to get here, she didn't even need different motivations, just a different chance. Her hair returned to its previous well-groomed appearance, her clothes dried and smoothed out, and the droplets of water vanished from her skin.

Added to OP. Point total of nerfed version ~145 points, not counting weaknesses. (90 M, 55 S)

Voidus looked up, a sad smile on his face as he stared back at the Stranger, at the multitude of spikes that were now visible, at the cold eyes, and at the man that lay beneath it all. They'd known each other for a long time, far longer than most people would be able to. They'd forged a new path for the denizens who followed after, conducted countless experiments throughout the years. But throughout it all they rarely talked of how they had changed, or of who they had been to begin with. When they'd met, both had already been changed by Hemalurgy. It had been a shared interest that inspired their interest in each other, but it also meant that neither of them knew what the other had been before making those changes to themselves. Since then they'd both trodden the same path, they'd both changed so far that most people didn't even consider them human anymore, not physically at least. But for all their similarities, they were still different. The path was the same so was it their origins that had caused them to arrive at different destinations? Voidus didn't know of the Stranger's ultimate origins, but he could speak to his own at least. If there was any place to talk about it, it would be here after all. "Family can cause a person to make strange decisions." He replied quietly. @Fatebreaker

Voidus stared back at the Stranger, locking eyes with him with equal solemnity. He didn't answer immediately, waiting a moment for the weight of the suggestion to hang over both of them. The consequences of what they discussed would affect the entire world and everyone on it. Is that what I want? He pondered. To remake the world anew? It was what good scientists did wasn't it? Even when an experiment was a success you had to repeat it to be sure. And if it wasn't a success then you ran multiple trials, altered the variables and tried again. But was the entire world simply an experiment? In a way it certainly was, that had been their original goal after all. But time had let it change and grow. It had surprised him at times, disappointed him at others. But mostly it imply weighed down on him, an immense responsibility, one that constantly fought for its own destruction even as he sought to preserve it. To most people of the world he was either deified or vilified, sometimes both in equal measure. But for those few who did not, perhaps it was worth it. This experiment had brought many people flocking towards it from a dozen different worlds, creating a melting pot of culture, information exchange, invention. Could they remake it and still keep that? If they meticulously made things the way they wanted them to be then would the world be able to surprise them any more? "Our problem has almost never been whether or not we could do something." Voidus replied, his face seemed almost to age as he dropped any facade and allowed his weariness to how in expression and tone. "Our problem has always been whether or not we should do something." He glanced once more towards the Worldspike, giving a tired and nostalgic smile towards it. "I've thought about destroying it many times before." He continued. "When I was released and saw how everything had changed. Or when I was trapped here while an army marched on the city. When you left." He gave a soft sigh, dropping to the ground, leaning his back against the Worldspike and bringing one knee forward to rest his arms on. "I thought about it many times. But I never did." Part of it had always simply been his stubborn nature, a refusal to allow it all to fail, to admit that this experiment was flawed. Part out of camaraderie, he hadn't been the only one to create this after all and so one-sidedly destroying it didn't seem fitting. But there had always been another reason as well, something that had kept him focused on this world, dedicated to this unceasing experiment and his refusal to end it. As far as Voidus was aware it was one of the only secrets that even the Stranger didn't know.

It's not a bother and you didn't do anything wrong, I just don't know if there's a place for them as a PC in the current state of the narrative. It's possible that tone will shift next era and make a more appropriate setting.

It seems like there's been a number of cases of this happening again, so just to reiterate: Please do not use intro threads as a platform purely to recruit people to the RP. If the entire goal of your post is simply to try to get someone into the RP then you shouldn't be posting it there. If you make a post genuinely welcoming someone and happen to mention the existence of RPs that's fine, but if your post comprises of 90% an attempt to recruit someone into the RP and just the word 'welcome' at the top of it then I'd say the motives there are pretty clearly not in line with what the intro threads are actually about.

This thread has existed since before we rated characters for power level, the point is ultimately to make sure that a character is appropriate and will fit into the RP, that can take many forms. I wouldn't ordinarily try to tell someone how to RP a character but we've had explicit problems with certain types of character and a character whose entire personality is 'crazy person who is going to attack everything' is pretty guaranteed to do nothing but disrupt the rest of the RP, so it's easier for me to mention it now than every time it happens. There's no backstory or personality notes that would indicate that this is going to be anything other than a crazy psychopath who bursts into scenes randomly to cause chaos, that kind of a response is not something that can really help the RP develop in a meaningful way unless they're part of a larger overall plot and are only meant to serve as a small, temporary hurdle. Ultimately I can't see any reason why such a character would survive past a single scene unless they were relying heavily on plot armour, and its likely to cause serious disruptions to other people's characters.

"Seems like a likely place for them." Laurelai said after observing the map for a moment. "Populated, not well off enough that they'd have much to protect them against all of this." She gave a final nod of confirmation, pen spinning a few more times between her arched fingers before finally coming to a rest, the point quivering slightly beneath her palm. Hands going to start cramping soon. Laurelai noted before tucking the pen away and gently stretching her fingers out. Not an ideal condition to be going into a warzone with but needs must I suppose. She gave a small cough, clearing her throat a little before addressing Lita and KanMien again. "Well I think that's our best plan for now, we'll need to be careful while we're on the streets, try to stay out of fights. Lita, could you keep an ear out? We might be able to skirt around most of the actual combat." She picked up her glass, raising it to her mouth before remembering that it had already been finished and set it back down on the table again, her hand shook for a moment but with a frown she stilled it, placing the glass down gently and prepared herself to Alleytravel. Voidus twitched as a voice called out softly, his head suddenly twisted to identify the noise that shouldn't exist in this place, the sound of another person in this secure location. But he calmed as he identified the Stranger, giving him a grin in return. "Going to take a while before it sinks in that you're really back." Voidus replied. "Not many others who could surprise me like that." He sighed, leaning against the sturdy metallic spike for support, feeling the cool metal against his skin, pulsing with Hemalurgic energy like the heartbeat of the world, rippling out across the Alleyverse to keep everything from tearing itself apart. "We ripped apart another universe to create this one." Voidus said, looking back towards the Stranger. "To test boundaries and push them, to research new possibilities. We destroyed a universe for science." He left the sentence to hang in the air between them, not judgmental or regretful, merely a statement. As though Voidus himself weren't sure what exactly he was trying to suggest. The universe had been empty when they'd spiked it after all, no life on any of the worlds that had dwelt within it, no matter at all in fact. It had simply been a universe of space. Empty. An enormous void.

It just seems like a character that is guaranteed to derail whatever it appears in, it's prone to lead to a situation like the waiter where scenes just get completely disrupted because a character showed up. It also sets a specific kind of tone that makes it difficult for much serious plot to take place I feel. Without knowing what you were planning for them it's hard for me to approve that.

It's a fine tactic when you're the only person writing a story, but when you're in an RP everyone is altering the story. One of the consequences of that is that you're not going to have perfect story structure where everything is tied up nicely because you don't have control over everything, trying to fight against that creates a jarring experience that's kind of half-RP, half straight fiction. Playing into the parts that make an RP different from a fanfiction or a novel are what creates the experiences that make it such a unique medium.

Could you add me as well? Thanks.

You'll never know if you don't try. If you try and they get shot down then you're not in any different a place than when you started, if you try and they don't get shot down then you get to play through your idea. This does get into the currently unanswered question of whether or not you could spike a spike out of someone. (Well not exactly since Aluminium is a little different, but effectively similar point)

Nothing stopping anyone from pitching ideas for main plots if they want to. The bureau is doing it because there was a vote for them to do it.

"Well TUBA have a base in the city." Laurelai said, gesturing towards the area. "But apparently it hasn't seen too much activity from anyone in their leadership so far. Best guess is the private residence of one of their higher ups, but finding out where those are might take too long." She frowned down at the map, wishing they had better intel on the group. The lack of any kind of show of force from TUBA had led many in the DA to dismiss them as a threat, but violence wasn't the only way someone could oppose them, and they were still one of the largest guilds in the city. "Might be fastest to work backwards, find someone from TUBA and then tail them back to wherever they're reporting." She said, tapping her chin in thought. "They'll probably be trying to clear out civilians, they did something similar during the war. Heading towards a population center would be the fastest route then?" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Whisper crouched next to a chimney, looking down at the street below where a large mob surrounded a figure crouched down on the ground. They seemed to have pulled him out of a bakery and started beating him to death, apparently needing no more proof than his profession to incite them into a mad rage, in spite of the clear lack of any kind of affiliation with any of the cities guilds. Interesting. Whisper pulled out her spike, activating the conjoiner fabrial and began sending a message back to the DA. Appears to be some kind of emotional manipulation, may require counteraction? She left it at a suggestion, but the DA likely wouldn't leave the entire city to tear itself apart, if only because it might bury other more useful information on their actual goal. They'd probably send out Allomancers, or possibly some of the abominations that had soothing capabilities like the Dread, keep everyone's emotions in check. Civilians get forced between two sources of emotional manipulation, likely that a few of them will break altogether if they haven't already. With a small shrug she settled back against the chimney, keeping watch over this group as they travelled. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Voidus allowed the barrier to close behind him again as he entered, a brief wave of nostalgia rushing over him as he found himself encased once again by an ever shifting dome of Aonic energy. The monotonous thudding of the ground as the Guardian continued its route. Voidus walked directly forward, passing just behind the Guardian as it circled, not looking it in the eye or holding any Investiture. He continued striding forward until finally he reached the base of the Worldspike itself, shimmering metallic surface rising up to a tip just beneath the barrier. He placed a gentle hand against it, testing that the charge hadn't diminished. He gave a small, satisfied nod after a moment, withdrawing his hand and looking up at the spike. "Been a while since I was here last." He said quietly, staring at the lustrous shine of the spike. "I've had a lot to deal with. The DA was still intact thankfully, I'd hate to think of all that wasted research. A few other small annoyances, nothing that can't be dealt with but they play with forces they don't understand. Even if one of them is that force made sentient, it still doesn't truly understand." He gave a soft sigh, venting his frustrations as the cool air within the barrier swept around him. "Well, it's not an excuse. Sorry it's been a while." Voidus said, patting the spike gently.

"Right," Lita said, returning from her supply run. "Where are we headed?" Laurelai opened her mouth to reply when a sudden flurry of mails came through to KanMien. She leaned over to take a look just as a photo was opened, some kind of red stream being emitted from the building. "Well at least they've confirmed that it's them." She noted. "We've been asked to stay out of combat for now, they should probably pull back. I'll start passing the information on." With one hand she began signing in Alleycant, with the other she began to mark out areas on the map, the area around plasmacore itself was obviously out for the moment. They'd need somewhere with concentrated TUBA forces if they wanted to send them a message. Though given the speed that things were escalating that might not be necessary anymore. They hadn't sent out any abominations yet but if fighting was taking place then they likely would soon. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Whisper stood on the tips of her toes, trying to get a better look at what was happening in the distance. She watched the continuous bombardment of the building from the sky, the rain of lights so similar to those which had once showered the entire city. Whisper let out a small sigh, shoulders slumping down. She flicked her hair back and as she did so broke the Lightweaving she kept around it. Her face shifted, features slightly rearranged in a different expression, her eyes had a perpetual wideness to them as she anxiously scanned the streets below, her hair hung matted and unkempt across her shoulders and poking out from the top, two small little feline ears stood perked up. Not a time for hiding anymore. She noted to herself as she leapt up to a nearby building. I'm fine. She signed back to Kumiko. Heading out for a bit, I'll let you know if I find anything pertinent. She broke out into a run and leapt from one rooftop to the next, making her way across the city. Plenty of chaos in the air tonight. Whisper gave a small carnivorous smile to those below as she leaped over them, trying to find one of the smaller gatherings of people. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Voidus waited for any further news from the scouts who seemed to have taken the initiative to start investigating Plasmacore, he hesitated at the base of the barrier to the Worldspike, not yet entering but also not leaving. Sudden light pierced the sky as a bombardment began to rain down on a particularly tall building, Plasmacore it seemed had many enemies tonight. Voidus frowned at the lights, following them back up to their source: The tremendous battleship that waited far, far above the city. Was this the same ship that had attacked the city the last time he'd entered the barrier? They'd only sent out some of the less destructive creations that time, but even so losing so many at once had been something of a setback, they'd only just recently managed to replenish all of those who had been lost. And such a pointless waste of Spikes as well, the bombing hadn't left many intact for reuse. Almost unconsciously Voidus lifted a hand, blindingly bright light began to spill out of the air as his touch seemed to rip a hole in the air through which the Dor could flow. He'd already taken aim at the ship and sketched out half of an Aon before he paused. Temper. They weren't pursuing immediate aggressive action, that was what they'd agreed upon. And he did not wish to rule the DA as a dictator, ignoring the decisions and wisdom of others. Best to leave it for now, there will always be time later. Time was one commodity that he didn't run out of, there would always be another day he could exact a toll from them in payment, or perhaps one day they'd prove useful in some other way. After all, unmaking something was easy, remaking something if you needed it later was more difficult. With that Voidus opened the small gateway into the barrier. He entered back into what had once been like a prison and smiled at the familiar, rhythmic thumping of footsteps.